Five and a half years ago…
With Infernal Machine: The Dawn of Submarine Warfare at the printer, the designers found themselves in a nostalgic and contemplative mood. Their first meeting was via private messaging on BoardGameGeek (BGG) back during the pandemic. They now offer their initial (somewhat uncanny or just curious) exchange to InsideGMT, as a way of explaining how they came up with such an obscure topic for a GMT Game.
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Monday, June 29, 2020, 9:34pm
Good evening, sir.
Thank you for designing “Enemy Coast Ahead: The Dambuster Raid.” I have a copy of the game and enjoy playing it immensely.
Would you consider designing a game using the “Enemy Coast Ahead” system on the “Guns of Navarone?”
I am aware that there may be copyright issues.
The fact remains, “The Guns of Navarone” is a cracking good subject for your patented game system.
Just my two cents.
Thanks, and
Good Gaming to You!
Ed “anton” Ostermeyer
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Monday, June 29, 11:57pm
Hi Anton,
Your email put me in a spooky mood. Guns of Navarone is one of my wife’s favorite movies, although she hasn’t seen it for years (neither have I). Here’s the spooky bit: We were talking about it this evening at dinner. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say? I made a flippant reference to the movie while discussing some forgettable topic and of course the conversation kind of spiraled from one movie reference to another…but when the dust settled both my wife and I were left with the feeling of nostalgia for that movie.
We agreed to watch it tonight. Hmmmm…
Spooky enough to make me suspicious. Are you some agent enlisted by my wife to put me out of sorts?
Given that my wife does not have a BGG account, nor, as far as I know, does she possess an understanding of what BGG is, I must assume that you are the genuine article and not a provocateur hired by my mischievous wife. I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
I am flattered by your email and I thank you for reaching out to me. My hope for ECA is that it tells a story, so I often find myself pondering if a movie or novel can be translated or represented in ECA form, and Guns of Navarone (thanks to my precocious wife) has crossed my mind.
As I sit down to watch the movie (in about twenty minutes), I will give it serious thought. In the meantime, I am curious to know what features of the movie/story you feel would transfer well to an ECA game. In other words, if you were to design it, or just to play it, what would you want in ECA: The Guns of Navarone?
Thanks again for contacting me.
Jerry
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Tuesday, June 30, 2020, 11:25am
Good morning, Jerry.
This is a case of equal parts great minds thinking alike, and me being bored with the “Wuhan Flu Incident” enough to put a DVD of “Guns of Navarone” in the machine and escape for a couple of hours. As I watched the film, I was struck on how the movie almost resembles one of the chapters in Homer’s Odyssey. It would go something like this:
Act One: Big Bad Beasty is up on its seaside mountaintop throwing boulders at passing ships. Expedition to directly confront Beasty gets all but wiped out. A Very Important Expedition is to begin soon but will fail if Beasty isn’t dealt with permanently.
Act Two: Enter the Hero who has a plan to do the Beasty in, taking along his picked band of highly specialized and scary friends. Hero’s plan includes arriving on-site in a fishing boat and not a war galley, then blending in with the Beasty’s long-suffering neighbors who want it gone and pronto, while avoiding the Beasty’s unethical and evil keepers who are bilking the marine insurance companies for every boat Beasty sinks. Group discovers agents of keepers have been eavesdropping on their plans; mayhem ensues and keepers are thwarted, for the moment.
Act Three: First part of journey to Beasty’s mountaintop is perilous to say the least. Hero’s best friend and chief planning officer not killed but badly wounded, slowing group’s progress because group members won’t leave him behind.
Act Four: Group meets with long-suffering neighbors, who agree to help whereupon trip to Beasty’s Lair gets even more fraught with Danger. Group is just avoiding capture by Beasty’s keepers seemingly at every turn. Suspicions fall on one of the helping neighbors who is really helping the keepers. Traitor is done away with, and its on to
Act Five: Through Hero’s trickery, group gets past keepers and into Beasty’s Lair. They pour olive oil on a boulder and barely escape with their lives from the pursuing keepers who don’t find the “special” boulder. When war galleys show up Beasty starts throwing boulders at them. Beasty grabs up the special boulder; it slips through his hands and lands on his toes. Howling with pain, Beasty is hopping around the mountaintop. Holding his hurt toes, Beasty trips and falls off the mountaintop and into a watery grave.
Everybody cheers.
Fade to black.
See? It’s Homer’s Odyssey.
Same geographical area of the globe just different time and actors. This whole format could equally be used to build another ECA-type game around one of my favorite movies, “The Professionals” (1966) directed by the incomparable Richard Brooks.
Set in 1912 the film is about a team of four highly skilled and VERY dangerous men (Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Woody Strode & Robert Ryan) hired by an elderly Texas rancher (Ralph Bellamy) to find and free his young wife (the luscious Claudia Cardinale) who has been kidnapped by Mexican revolutionary Jesus Raza, and taken to his desert fortress lair across the border. Having to deal with the chaos of the Mexican Revolution, the team first plan, equip, plan some more and then set out on their quest, meeting and fighting with bad guys, and good guys who turn out to be bad guys, ultimately finding out the Senora wasn’t being kidnapped at all, just freed from a loveless marriage to the ol’ Rancher by Raza, her real sweetheart.
Everyone likes to hear The Storyteller tell his Epic tale, from Beowulf to Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” to Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry,” all of which can be the basis for great games. You and I aren’t the only ones looking at this, either.
Look what Prospero Hall did with their “Jaws” game, or Ravensburger’s “Back to the Future.” Neither has the same degree of detail that an ECA-style game would, but there is a market out there; we just need to do the work and exploit the heck out of it.
And don’t get me started on all those “Sword & Sandal” Sixties Italian “Hercules” films; they just ripped the pages out of Bullfinch’s “Mythology” and pasted them whole-cloth into the movie screenplay.
I am always willing and able to help you out with game development and playtesting.
I designed “Arnhem & Operation Market-Garden” published by Spartan International in their quarterly magazine Spartan International Monthly way back in 1971.
I was a playtester for Avalon Hill on their Family/Leisure games “Wrasslin'” and “Gangsters.”
I also write the weekly food critic column for my local newspaper, the Johnson City Press, so I know what it is to have to keep up with a production schedule and meet a deadline.
And finally to allay your incipient confusion, I was not hired by your wife to spook you.
🙂
Let me know what you your thoughts are on this.
Again, I am always at your disposal.
Good Luck & Good Gaming!
Ed “anton” Ostermeyer
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Wednesday, July 1, 2020, 9:08pm
Well, I see you know the movie well. And the Greek story too. Very nice. Of course, for an Enemy Coast Ahead game it lacks that one detail called “history.” But who says it has to be an ECA game?
Two designer friends of mine, Greg Smith and Jason Carr, are both kicking around ideas for a prison escape game. Jason has even got a prototype for it, an Escape from Colditz game. And Greg was tinkering with a Great Escape game although I don’t think he’s done more than putter around with a few ideas. On different occasions I’ve been kibitzing with each of them, and they got me reading up on the subject. Now your crazy scheme has me ordering the book, and this uncannily seems cut from the same cloth as those other two projects.
Haven’t seen the Professionals, but I’ll give it a look. From what you say of it, reminds of Oceans 11 which if I recall featured members of the Rat Pack. Guns of Navarone and The Professionals are heist stories, I guess, except with the former they’re trying to break in and blow stuff up. ‘Don’t get caught’ is the underlying theme, along with ‘Get the job done’ as Gregory Peck said. Similar to the prison escape scenarios: don’t get caught and get ‘r done.
Okay, so you’re a designer. How do we do this?
Cheers,
Jerry
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…after several messages back and forth…
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Monday, July 13, 9:37am
Good morning, Jerry.
More and more, I’ve been thinking that we need to use the American Civil War as our source for background on ECA commando-type raids.
Consider:
After the Union’s abortive Kilpatrick/Dahlgren Raid on Richmond in early 1864, the Confederate Secret Service turned away from military targets and increased their efforts to take the struggle to Yankee civilian and political infrastructure.
1)John Batchelor’s novel “American Falls” depicts one such operation, the attempt by Confederate agents based in Canada to foment panic and disrupt the North’s upcoming national election by simultaneously setting fires in New York City hotels and public buildings using an advanced form of “Greek Fire.” in 1864, New York City was a Southern-sympathizing “Copperhead” stronghold with its mayor and NY Governor Horatio Seymour both leading the effort to oust Lincoln and negotiate peace with the CSA.
2) Speaking of New York City, The rebel secret services also had a plan to spread the highly contagious and deadly Yellow Fever in New York City during the summer of 1864 causing an epidemic that, because of NYC’s center as a rail and transportation center, would spread “Yellow Jack” from there to all major cities that had a choo-choo.
3) The Yankee railnet was a particular target of interest. Bridges and tunnels, like the Pennsylvania Railroad’s great Susquehanna River bridge or its Allegheny Tunnel in Pennsylvania were prime targets. By the way, the Susquehanna River bridge was partially burned by Federal troops during the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863, in part to prevent JEB Stuart’s cavalry from seizing and destroying all of it.
4)Then there’s the raid on St. Albans, Vermont, part of an ongoing guerrilla operation by the Confederates to raid northern cities from bases in Canada to build the Confederate treasury and force the Union to divert troop deployments from the south. At St. Albans, the raiders, mostly rebel cavalrymen, some of whom had been prisoners in Union POW camps, occupied the town for most of a day. They robbed the town’s three banks, held townspeople for ransom and, when ransom was not forthcoming tried to burn the town using Greek Fire, but were unsuccessful. The raiders got away with $208,000 (roughly $3.4 million today,) and escaped to Canada. The Canadians at first seized the raiders, then let them go, angering American opinion, though they returned the money to St. Albans.
5) My favorite is what has come down to us as “The Great Locomotive Chase” that I have spoken of earlier in our correspondence. Union agent James J. Andrews and a team of Union soldier volunteers from Ohio hijack a locomotive (the “General”) outside Atlanta, Georgia in 1862, and run north along the Western & Atlantic railroad towards Chattanooga, Tennessee, a crucial Confederate supply base, cutting telegraph lines, destroying bridges with fire and rails with pry-bar, wrecking rebel rolling stock, blowing up the vital Cheetogeta Tunnel and leaving Chattanooga open for conquest by General Ormsby Michell’s Army of the Ohio. Andrews’ plans are ultimately thwarted by the “General’s” conductor William Fuller, who sets off in pursuit of the Yankees who stole his train.
With the American Civil War as our historical epoch, there is no copyright issue as our sources are public domain through the “Official Records of the War of the Rebellion” in the National Archives!
With the Andrews Raid, we could change the “Enemy Coast Ahead” moniker to “Enemy City Ahead,” the city being Chattanooga.
Your thoughts and comments are, as always, welcome.
Hope your homework doesn’t give you trouble.
Good Luck & Good Gaming!
Ed O.
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…after several messages back and forth…
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Sunday, July 19, 2020, 10:24pm
I didn’t know about that episode. Very interesting, and it certainly qualifies as ECA material. I’d like to do a game dealing with the Hunley, the CSA’s submarine. It’s on my ‘to-do’ list, somewhere, but I’m so darn slow I don’t know I’ll ever manage it. But, the Cushing/Albemarle episode would fit nicely into that package.
You have too many good ideas, Ed!
Jerry
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Sunday, July 19, 2020, 5:20pm
Good evening, Jerry.
Holy cats! I completely forgot about the “Hunley!”
Shame on me ’cause Charleston’s just five hours away from where I live!
As the world’s first true submarine the “H.L. Hunley” actually sank twice during sea trials in Charleston harbor, before it ever got into combat, drowning five crewmen the first time.
The second time saw the loss of eight crewmen including her civilian inventor, H.L. Hunley.
Yet, each time it sank the Confederate Navy raised the sub and, amazingly, found a crew to man her once more.
If somebody asked me to “volunteer” to be part of the crew on an unproven submersible that had sunk twice before, drowning my fellow swabbies both times, I’d tell the Navy “NO!”
Sure says a lot for American desperation and courage, doesn’t it?
Let me see what I can do with the “Hunley” as an ECA game.
Good going, sir!
Onward!
Ed O.
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Monday, July 20, 2020, 8:23pm
LOL! Yes, I think this subject has great potential for an ECA game. I love the idea of adding a design-your-sub element to a game. Who wouldn’t want to design a submarine!
Jerry
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Infernal Machine is charging later this week and shipping at the end of January!! The game is still available at GMT’s P500 price for a few more days, and you can learn more or pre-order here.
Author: Jeremy (Jerry) White
